“The thunder hammer project?”
On the temporary villain rooftop,
Hellcat repeated the somewhat tongue-twisting project name that Xin Yuehu had uttered.
“So that’s the action plan you extracted from Inari’s memory, Fox Fox?”
“That’s right. Miss Inari formulated this plan ten years ago, and during the ten years she was gone, she had been searching for a way to completely eradicate the Star Realm Giant Beast.”
“The Star Realm Giant Beast… that really is a rather tricky fellow…”
Cheshire Rabbit interjected, muttering softly as she pinched her chin, her brows tightly furrowed.
According to the intelligence Xia Taotao had been gathering, anything related to “Giant Beasts” was never easy to deal with.
For example, the Giant Beast Leviathan that emerged from the Star Realm Rift sealed by Red Rose had off-the-charts strength. Su Tianqing had to exert her full power just to barely block its attack on Red Rose.
But that Star Realm Magic Cannon attack couldn’t be considered Leviathan’s normal attack—after that magic cannon, Leviathan’s magic power was greatly depleted, which led to it being suppressed by Black Hole Hellcat throughout the subsequent fight.
“If you had faced a Leviathan with full magic power back then, Catcat, you might have also fallen into a bitter struggle.”
“Yeah, but if that were the case, couldn’t Tianqing also deploy a large number of Magic Girls to participate in the battle?”
Hellcat voiced her thoughts,
“So I think, a Giant Beast is just a relatively strong Starry Sky Aberrants; as long as we use the right methods, it’s not unbeatable.”
“I agree with that.” Cheshire Rabbit nodded in affirmation.
As for Su Tianqing herself… she didn’t feel anything at all.
Giant Beast Monster? Isn’t it just a Monster with an extra 【Super Giantization】 tag? Ben Hu could make one too if given some time!
But in reality, Ben Hu couldn’t make a Giant Beast with Leviathan’s strength.
—The Xin Yue Magic Wand has its limits. It’s still too difficult to create a perfect one-to-one replica of Leviathan right now.
But Ben Hu’s current strength has also made significant progress!
The Golden-haired Fox Girl was completely engrossed in admiring and studying the brand-new magic wand in her hand:
After collecting all the items Inari left behind, the power of the fox mask was fully unleashed, and the secret codex was also incredibly helpful, strengthening the Xin Yue Magic Wand into a brand new form:
【Xin Yue Magic Wand · Inari Form】
A circle of crimson-gold ribbons appeared around the edge of the wand, replacing the flowing ribbons of stars. An extra fox mask pattern was added as decoration to the guardian star at the tip of the wand.
In its new form, the wand’s Monster summoning and customization abilities were all retained, with the added ability to recycle Monsters to strengthen itself.
Last time, when she was sparring with Hyacinth on the rooftop, she secretly recycled the Sirius Magic Girl, which gave Hyacinth a little shock.
And that was just an experimental usage when the power wasn’t fully unleashed.
After completely unleashing the Inari Form, Su Tianqing noticed a relatively important change in the Monster summoning ability:
Firstly, her summoning quantity limit was removed, replaced by an upper limit for enhancement stacking and special ability stacking. There was a fixed upper limit on the number of enhancements that could be used each day.
Sounds a bit complicated, right? It becomes very clear once you actually operate it!
For example:
Ben Hu can currently use a total of 175 enhancements and 30 special abilities per day. She can currently apply a maximum of 35 enhancement stacks to a single Monster, plus an additional maximum of 6 special abilities.
Originally, she could only summon five Monsters per day, but this quantity limit has been removed, replaced by enhancement stack counts!
In other words, she can divide the 175 enhancements into five equal parts, each with 35, and create 5 BOSS Monsters with top-tier strength and full power.
Or she can completely break down all 175 enhancement counts and create 175 fodder Monsters with only 1 enhancement each!
How about that! Isn’t it a super cool summoning ability?
Fox Fox wagged her tail.
However, the application scenarios for fodder Monsters were actually a bit unclear; they couldn’t even really serve as atmosphere builders against Star Shadow.
“Fox Fox, do you have any new intelligence to share about the plan Inari proposed?”
Hellcat asked, following up.
The Fox Girl, who had been engrossed in admiring her new form of magic wand, immediately perked up her fox ears and tail, blinking her eyes.
“Hmm… I still have memories from two items that I haven’t looked at. I plan to wait until Hyacinth and the others take further action before deciding.”
These were also a series of requests and hints Inari gave her in her memories.
【For the next actions, I hope you can conduct external investigations after Miss Hyacinth begins her actions. Do not rush to delve deep into it.】
【Except for Miss Xin Yuehu, your companions do not currently have the blessing of the stars, and approaching my sealing barrier rashly may lead to unexpected situations.】
【For safety reasons, please conduct your investigations from the periphery for now.】
Magic Girl Inari said so, and Su Tianqing relayed her words verbatim to her companions.
【Legendary Quest: thunder hammer project】
【Investigate the underground magic power distribution in Hong Kong City.】
The secret codex refreshed with a new quest. Let’s investigate according to this goal today.
“So it seems that the massive magic power barrier deep underground in the center of Hong Kong City is indeed the key Inari used to seal Jörmungandr.”
“To be able to mobilize such a huge amount of magic power… Inari doesn’t have Star Shadow, does she? How did she do it?”
Hellcat and Cheshire Rabbit exclaimed simultaneously, but also raised questions.
Regarding this question, which they couldn’t answer for the time being, the two didn’t put too much thought into it, focusing instead on the execution of the plan.
“In short, for now, we’ll just systematically gather other intelligence on the periphery, right?”
“Miss Inari discussed it with me that way.” Xin Yuehu nodded.
“I previously lied to them, saying that barrier was a bomb I set up, and I didn’t expect Hyacinth and the others to actually believe it. They’re probably conducting an underground investigation in the center of Hong Kong City right now.”
At this, Su Tianqing grinned, her smile filled with delight.
A bomb?
There was no bomb at all!
When she was planning the heist, she had no idea why there was such a large magic power reaction in the center of Hong Kong City, so she simply treated it as a bomb barrier.
She didn’t expect it to be the main body of the barrier Inari left behind to seal Jörmungandr, which was the core of her 【Harvest Magic】 barrier.
…She had clearly only intended to improve the Harvest Magic by following the instructions of the secret codex initially, so why did she end up in a prelude to a BOSS battle after peeling back the layers?
Perhaps Inari saw all of this with her future sight magic, and that’s why she deliberately facilitated all of her actions?
“Seeing the future, it really is a terrifying magic strong enough to trigger the constraints of time law,” Su Tianqing sighed.
While formulating the external investigation plan with Catcat Rabbitrabbit, Su Tianqing also glanced at Fenrir, the gray wolf, who was trying to join the discussion but clearly hadn’t understood anything.
Doggy had been trying hard to understand what she was discussing just now, but from her clear, babbling eyes, she probably hadn’t understood anything at all.
She’ll give her a private lesson when they go out to investigate later. Su Tianqing thought.
After all, in Inari’s thunder hammer project, Doggy was a key figure in defeating Jörmungandr.
“In any case, let’s first systematically investigate the situation, and then see how to proceed later.”
Speaking to her companions, Su Tianqing pulled out a subway map of Hong Kong City from her pocket and pointed to one of the lines.
“Let’s start from here.”
“Our goal today is to gather all clues regarding the existence of that Giant Beast in the underground periphery of the barrier!”